Peter Boyle, 71, Is Dead; Roles Evoked Laughter and Anger

By ROBERT BERKVIST

Published: December 14, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

Peter Boyle, who left the life of a monk to study acting and went on to become one of the most successful character actors of his time in films like ''Joe,'' ''Young Frankenstein'' and ''Monster's Ball,'' then capped his career as the curmudgeonly father on the hit sitcom ''Everybody Loves Raymond,'' died on Tuesday evening in Manhattan. He was 71.

His death was announced by his publicist, Jennifer Plante. She said Mr. Boyle, who lived in Manhattan, had suffered from multiple myeloma and heart disease.

Mr. Boyle received five Emmy Award nominations for his portrayal of the grouchy, wisecracking Frank Barone in nine seasons on ''Raymond.'' But it was in dramatic roles that he emerged as a formidable presence on screen a quarter-century earlier -- a tall, bulky-framed, balding actor playing memorable characters like a drunken redneck (''Joe''), a corrupt union leader (''F.I.S.T.'') and a savvy private eye (''Hammett'').

Mr. Boyle could be convincingly chilling, so much so that he often ran the risk of being typecast. When he appeared with Peter Falk in William Friedkin's 1978 film ''The Brink's Job,'' playing a gang member, Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that ''Mr. Boyle's role is one that he could telephone in by this time.''

But it wasn't all thugs and gangsters. In 1974, in Mel Brooks's film ''Young Frankenstein,'' he played the bumbling monster brought to life by Dr. Frankenstein's addled grandson (Gene Wilder). At one point, Mr. Boyle's monster, decked out in white tie and tails ?a Fred Astaire, performed a nifty soft-shoe routine with Mr. Wilder while bellowing out the lyrics of Irving Berlin's ''Puttin' On the Ritz.''

Mr. Boyle, who once admitted to being ''a little nutty,'' enjoyed his infrequent ventures into film comedy. In ''Where the Buffalo Roam'' (1980), a screen portrait of the freewheeling writer Hunter S. Thompson (Bill Murray), he went happily wild as the writer's carousing companion. With members of the Monty Python troupe, he was part of a zany pirate crew in ''Yellowbeard'' (1983). And in ''The Dream Team'' (1989), he played a mental patient fixated on Jesus.

His breakthrough, however, was no laughing matter. He won the title role in the 1970 film ''Joe,'' about a hard-drinking, hate-filled factory worker who improbably joins forces with a murderous executive in a bloody war on hippies and the rest of the counterculture. He was paid only $3,000 for the work, he later said, but he realized he had taken a giant step forward. The role, he said at the time, seemed to have been made for him because he had grown up surrounded by people like Joe.

''I knew the character so well that when it came to the actual shooting of the movie, I was worried that I would do a caricature,'' he said. Writing in The Times, Mr. Canby called ''Joe'' one of the 10 worst films of the year but hailed Mr. Boyle's performance as extraordinary.

Peter Boyle Jr. was born on Oct. 18, 1935 in Philadelphia. His father was a Philadelphia television personality who had a children's show. After graduating from La Salle College, Peter Jr. joined the Christian Brothers order and entered a monastery as Brother Francis. He later recalled praying ''so hard I had calluses on my knees.'' After three years, he left the monastery -- he later called it ''an unnatural way to live'' -- and, after a brief period in the Navy that ended in a nervous breakdown, came to New York City to try acting.

In New York he studied with Uta Hagen, took whatever parts he could find, toured with a road production of Neil Simon's ''Odd Couple'' and wound up in Chicago, where he joined the Second City improvisational troupe. He was living in Chicago at the time of the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and never forgot the ensuing explosion of violence and the reek of tear gas in the streets. Early on, he described himself as a ''conservative radical.''

Politics was an element in his work in the years ahead. In ''The Candidate'' (1972), he played a cool-headed campaign manager for a liberal Democrat (Robert Redford) running for the Senate. In the 1977 NBC movie ''Tail Gunner Joe'' he portrayed Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in the Army-McCarthy hearings.

Mr. Boyle relived his 1968 experience in Chicago on HBO's ''Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago Eight'' (1987), as the jailed protester David Dellinger. And in the 1989 CBS docudrama ''Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North,'' he played Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, the national security adviser.

Mr. Boyle clearly preferred film and television over stage work, but he was no stranger to the theater. He was seen on Broadway in 1980 in ''The Roast,'' directed by Carl Reiner, in which he played a comedian who is the guest of honor at a roast. Off Broadway later that year, he co-starred with Tommy Lee Jones in a Public Theater production of Sam Shepard's ''True West.'' He also appeared at the Circle Repertory in 1982 in ''Snow Orchid,'' a poorly reviewed play by Joe Pintauro in which Mr. Boyle played the unstable head of a dysfunctional family.

Mr. Boyle had met Loraine Alterman, his wife-to-be, when he was filming ''Young Frankenstein'' and she was interviewing Mel Brooks for Rolling Stone magazine. They were married in 1977, with John Lennon as the best man at their wedding. Mr. Boyle had befriended Lennon through his wife, who was a friend of Lennon's wife Yoko Ono.

Ms. Boyle survives her husband, as do their daughters, Lucy Boyle and Amy Boyle, and Mr. Boyle's sisters, Sidney Boyle and Alice Duffy.

Mr. Boyle's film credits in the late '80s and early '90s included the historical drama ''Walker'' (1987), in which he played Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, and ''Bulletproof Heart'' (1995), in which he was cast as a hit man. In ''Monster's Ball'' (2001), he gave an acclaimed performance as the bigoted father of a prison death-house guard, played by Billy Bob Thornton.

Mr. Boyle's most recent film work was in ''Shadows of Atticus,'' a drama that has not yet been released. He had also been cast in ''Chatham,'' a romantic comedy about three retired sea captains; it has not begun filming.

Mr. Boyle became a familiar face on television in recent years. He appeared in several episodes of ''NYPD Blue'' on ABC and won an Emmy Award in 1996 for a guest appearance on the long-running Fox series ''The X-Files.'' That was also the year Mr. Boyle became a member of the Barone family on the durable CBS sitcom ''Everybody Loves Raymond.''

The series starred the comedian Ray Romano as Ray Barone, a sportswriter whose parents (played by Mr. Boyle and Doris Roberts) are all too willing to complicate daily life in Ray's suburban household.

Mr. Boyle suffered a stroke in 1990 and had a heart attack while taping an episode of ''Raymond'' in 1999. But he quickly recovered and continued his career, pursuing what he called his challenge on ''Raymond'' -- ''finding where the funny is.''

Photo: Peter Boyle, right, in ''Young Frankenstein''; top left, with Doris Roberts in the series ''Everybody Loves Raymond''; and above left, in ''Joe.'' (Photos by Photofest); (Photo by Gale M. Adler/CBS)

Correction: December 23, 2006, Saturday
An obituary on Dec. 14 about the actor Peter Boyle referred incorrectly to his experience as a member of the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic order, as a young man. He was a student brother; he was not a monk, though in some interviews he referred to himself as having been one. During his three years with the order, he lived in a house of study, not a monastery. Because of an editing error, the obituary also misstated Mr. Boyle's full name. He was Peter Lawrence Boyle, not Peter Boyle Jr. (His father, a television personality in Philadelphia, was Francis ''Pete'' Boyle.)